7/25/2012

Mr. Rewrite is excited that student journalists from his place of employment are covering the Summer Olympics in London. That has him thinking about AP style for various Olympic events.

First, the AP Stylebook notes that it's decathlon rather than decathalon. AP is kind enough not to point it out, but Mr. Rewrite will note that many articles are already making this mistake (example: this PR piece touting Stanford University's Olympic athletes).

As the Dream Team and its equivalent in the women's ranks go for the gold, note that according to AP style Carmelo Anthony shouldn't take so many jump shots (two words) as a frontcourt (one word) player.

7/13/2012

The Penn State news of the past 24 hours can't be dealt with lightly. But Mr. Rewrite should note, while acknowledging the gravity of the news being conveyed, that the AP Stylebook calls for cover-up, not coverup, as a noun and adjective and cover up as a verb. So the Freeh report alleges that certain officials engaged in a cover-up, at least if a news organization bound by AP style is reporting it.

7/12/2012

Hey rama! This Yahoo! blurb fails to follow Mr. Rewrite's First Rule of Who/Whom: If ever one feels like using whom, simply write around the problem or risk the wrath of mean-spirited and-or wannabe grammarians who live for the opportunity to savage writers over who/whom errors. Rewriting also helps because whom usually suggests that a passage is far from conversational. William Safire, as quoted by Bryan A. Garner in Garner's Modern American Usage, put it this way: "When whom is correct, recast the sentence."

In this case, the blurb would read better by getting rid of the unnecessary comma and the perceived need for whom or some substitute that would apply more elegantly to the word group:

The mayor calls out a group he blames for an eruption of violence in Chicago.

Or one could say:

The mayor calls out a group that he blames for an eruption of violence in Chicago.

Whatever the decision, who/whom only apply to human beings and not to entities created by human beings. In this case, the blurb is referring to gangs. While he would disagree, Mr. Rewrite supposes one could argue that whom applies because gangs consist of human beings. But the sentence reads horribly with whom. So eliminate it or write around it to keep the sentence conversational.

7/08/2012

Unless the shopping carts at this Trader Joe’s are suing customers, they cause damage, not damages. The AP Stylebook and pretty much every other style/usage guide reserve damages for compensation that courts assign for injury or loss.

Who's kvetching?

Mr. Rewrite is a close friend of Steve Elliott (email), a professor of practice at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Like Elliott, he's a little cranky.